The High Cost of Racializing Crime

Black Lives Matter is what happens when you reduce civil rights to the rights of criminals.

Every group has its criminals from the Irish Mob of Boston to the Jewish gangsters of the Lower East Side, the Italian Mafia, Chinese tongs and Latin American gangs. It’s not just minorities. The lower down a group is on the American socio-economic ladder, even if its roots are white, and Anglo-Saxon, the more likely it is to have its own criminal class.

What makes a criminal class truly pervasive though is the social approval of its community. That approval is what keeps a group lower down on the socio-economic ladder. The more social sanction there is for being a criminal, the less functional the next generation is going to be.

The criminal class of a group operates in two spheres: organized and disorganized crime.

Organized crime is rooted in tight dynastic and familial networks overseen by clever and ruthless men who have a larger vision than knocking over liquor stores, while disorganized crime springs from broken families, poor socialization, and no useful skills. The men who are involved in organized crime have a moral code and want to pass on something to their children. They have a strong sense of loyalty and have lines that they will refuse to cross. When these things cease to be true, the ring they are part of starts to break down in corruption and mistrust.

Disorganized crime has no vision, little loyalty, and its children are bastards and orphans.

When a group moves on, its criminal class, organized or disorganized, gets left behind. That’s what happened to the Jewish gangsters or the rural bank robbers of the Depression. Glamorizing thugs as vital to the community and a source of pride can keep a criminal class, like the Mafia, around past its time. But celebrating organized crime is better than the alternative.

The most corrosive combination is embracing both organized and disorganized crime. When that happens then, as in parts of Latin America, gang members take over the culture.

Contrary to the convictions of both black and white supremacists, there’s little that is historically unique about black crime. Other minority groups have at times embraced a criminal class, and treated enforcement efforts as a form of bigotry, always to their own detriment. What is perhaps unique is the extent to which white liberals have embraced black criminals as a pet cause.

Read the rest from Daniel Greenfield HERE.

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